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Head on over to find out the recipe for this Chocolate Meringue Cake with Drunken Fruit; I made it for my own ‘Friendsgiving’, it’s a rich and delicious thing to share with your nearest and dearest. A definite recipe for the upcoming festive season.

Life’s big experiences always feel a little easier when you have someone to share them with. Having your first baby changes you immensely, and I was lucky enough to make two dear, dear friends just after we all had our first babies. We’ve shared hard times and happy times, day to day hum-drum and excitement, and now our children have the most special kind of friendship that hopefully they will take with them through their entire lives, friends you have had since birth.

These ladies are my kin, and our families feel interwoven.

Times may come when we don’t get to see each other as much as we have in these formative years, but I know that we will always hold a special place in each other’s hearts. My life has been so much richer for having grown alongside them.

Congratulations to beautiful H + D, we love you and all you are. Another of life’s big moments, what a treat to share it with you.

And whilst I made this as a wedding cake, it really is perfect to share for morning or afternoon tea with some close friends or loved ones.

Persian Love Cake for H + D…

honest and exotic just like you, to help celebrate your declaration of love xx

Measure the flour, salt, sugar and nutmeg into a medium bowl and stir to combine.

In a saucepan, melt the butter and maple syrup together, until liquid.

Pour the butter and syrup into the flour mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until all the butter has been incorporated. Press half of this mixture into the base of your cake tin.

With the remaining half of the butter/flour mixture, stir in the natural yoghurt, egg and bicarbonate soda. Mix well until there are no lumps, it will be quite runny. Pour this mixture into the cake tin over the buttery base.

Sprinkle your chopped nuts on top and place in the middle of the oven (pop an oven tray on the bottom of your oven to catch any buttery drips) and bake for around 40 minutes, or until the centre of the cake springs back when you touch it. I baked mine a little longer at H + D’s request, turning the oven down to 160 degrees C after 40 minutes to avoid burning the nuts. If you bake it until the centre just springs back, the middle layer will have the consistency of a thick, set custard… if you bake it a little longer it will be chewier and a bit more spongey.

Let the cake cool completely in the tin before removing the springform.

Because this cake was for a celebration, I decorated mine with crystallized rose petals, nut praline, edible glitter and a touch of edible gold leaf. But really, the nuts look beautiful on top just as they are. Honest, comforting and delicious.

This should come as no surprise really, given the amount of cake that is often being whipped up and going out of our kitchen. Always eager ‘helpers’, they often come up with their own combinations and drawings to articulate exactly what they mean. There were some pretty fancy numbers being dreamt up this year, let me tell you.

Speculation was rife as to what kind of cake everyone was going to have for their birthday. Some prefer tradition, whilst others have constantly evolving ideas throughout the year; the anticipation was huge.

Finally, after the usual intense brainstorming of ideas, it was decided that strawberry cupcakes with raspberry icing would suffice. But only if they were in the style of a fairy garden. Vision AND flavour, you see what I mean.

No worries, strawberry and raspberry, a berry-licious combination, as Strawberry Shortcake would say. The only challenge now, to make one that all our kinder friends can eat. Nut free, dairy free, egg free.

I got my substituting brain on, and remembered a birthday cake from my own childhood. A strawberry and coconut cake, which we baked in a heart shaped tin. Inspiration drawn, I got a-baking.

Strawberry and Coconut Vegan Cupcakes

(nut free, dairy free, egg free)

120g spelt flour

140g raw sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

pinch of salt

40g coconut butter (not coconut oil), the more fragrant the better

120ml coconut milk

1 tsp vanilla paste

egg replacer to the equivalent of 1 egg

100g chopped strawberries

Put out all of your ingredients, and allow them to come to room temperature. Cross fingers for a day that is not too cold so your coconut butter will be soft and pliable (please use coconut butter versus coconut oil. The butter is made with the whole coconut flesh, not just the pressed out oil, this gives it a much more voluptuous consistency as well as maximum tropical flavour! My favourite by far is Niugini Organics; they work with local communities in PNG to produce their coconut butter, so not only is it totally delicious, it’s good for karma points too.)

Measure out your flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and coconut butter into the bowl of an electric mixer. Mix on slow until the mixture looks uniformly sandy, without any large lumps and bumps.

Pour in the coconut milk and the splash of vanilla, and mix until well combined. Add your constituted egg replacer and give it a spin on medium speed until everything is nice and smooth.

Stir in your chopped strawberries, or if they are a bit on the cold side, drop them directly into the cupcake cases (so you don’t give that coconut butter a cold shock!)

Divide the mixture amongst the cupcake cases, it will be runny but don’t worry! These cupcakes turn out sweet, delicious and fragrant and not at all dry (if someone knows a better word than ‘moist’, then please, let me know).

Bake in the oven for around 30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cupcake comes out clean. My cupcakes didn’t go very brown, I think this is to do with using coconut butter rather than normal butter, so don’t rely on ‘golden brown’ being your indicator for the cupcakes being done!

Let the cupcakes cool down a touch before turning them out onto a wire rack to cool completely before icing.

Now, I wish I could give you a super awesome dairy-free and delicious frosting recipe. Unfortunately I can’t. I did experiment using coconut butter, icing sugar and fresh raspberries to create a super yummy and good for you frosting, and…. it was an epic fail. It went straight to the chickens. So instead I had to default and use a standard frosting recipe, just substituting dairy-free spread (I used Nuttelex) and coconut milk instead of cow’s. A dash of raspberry oil (from some macaron-ing days) added the required raspberry element. I would have way rather used fresh raspberries, but after one botched attempt, I just needed to get these babies done. I’ll put conquering that frosting recipe on the to-do list, and if you have an awesome dairy-free frosting that doesn’t use vegetable oils, then please let me know!!

Things may have seemed quiet… virtually quiet; does this mean things are actually quiet? No. In fact things are busy, crazy, noisy and for the most part fun.

It has been birthday season, wedding season, merry-making season. And here I have a moment to pause as I await a couple to pickup some cakes for their wedding tomorrow.

Cakes, cakes, cakes. Boy have there been some cakes! There have been jars of crumbs, custards, caramels all around the kitchen, our fridge has been taken over by sweetness. And there is more to come. But with each cake comes refinement of methods, perfecting of recipes and mastering of box folding skills. And each time is gets a little bit quicker and a smidgen bit easier. Swirls are now whipped up, rather than agonised over; layering to a level is now more of a given rather than something to be strived for! Thank heavens it still feels creative and fun, and as always I have a happy and willing gang to lick clean those spatulas for me.

It was Nana Bear’s birthday last week, so the kids got their rainbow on and decorated her cake…

Holy sugar, I hear you call! Well I have been doing my best to maintain a balance in our day to day lives and lunch boxes whilst the dust of icing sugar settles, but my daughter last week described a drawing of a dress she had done as ‘acai’ coloured – so I think we’re doing okay!

And amongst all this I went to a ‘Science of Styling’ class run by the fabulous Megan Morton, to help gain some inspiration in how I communicate what I do so not all of my photos are just of a round cake on my floorboards! At the end of the day I realised it’s all just fundamentals of art anyway, with a splash believing in yourself and your own style, so yippee, let’s just live life as beautifully as we can and that’s got to shine through. And beautiful things make people happy, and that’s okay!

So with all of this and more going on, there haven’t been too many moments for experimentation. But there is some definite sub conscious stirrings going on, and hopefully sometime soon I will have a moment to break free from the busy-ness (business) and still have enough energy to feel creative. And one day bring you a new recipe!

But for now, to my ‘favourite, so far’ salted caramel recipe. Sticky, sweet, salty and still pliable enough to work with straight from the fridge. There was some definite trial and error with some caramels setting rock hard, not the best for layering in a cake! But this one is a keeper, and as is so often the case, we have Christina Tosi to thank for it.

2g salt (Christina recommends 4g, which I find a little salty, so I cut it down to 2, then sprinkle some Fleur De Sal flakes when I am using the caramel for a little more pop of salt)

130g sugar

100g glucose

1 gelatine sheet

105g heavy cream (yes, you need two lots of 105g)

Put 105g cream, butter, vanilla and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.

Make a caramel: Heat the sugar and glucose in a medium heavy-based saucepan over medium heat until the sugar begins to melt. Once the sugar is starting to melt stir, stir, stir until you have a beautiful deep golden colour, 3 to 5 minutes.

While you are attending to the caramel, practice your multi-tasking skills and bloom the gelatine sheet, in a cup of cool water.

When you are happy with the colour of your caramel, take it off the heat and pour in the other 105g of cream. Stand back as it may spit and steam! Once it has all calmed down, whisk that pot of caramel until it is smooth and glossy. If there are any hard spots of caramel, put the pot back on a gentle heat and whisk until smooth.

Whisk in the bloomed gelatine, which you have squeezed all excess water from, until is has completely dissolved. At this point you are going to pour your caramel into the bowl with the butter, cream, vanilla and salt in it. Christina recommends pouring the mixture through a sieve, I don’t as I find it makes a sticky mess and my caramel has always been pretty smooth anyway, but by all means go for it if you are that way inclined.

Let the mixture sit without touching it for a couple of minutes, until you can see the butter starting to melt. Then, give it a good old whisk (slowly at first so you don’t splash it all over yourself) until it is shiny, sticky and beautiful.

You can use it right now, or keep it in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 weeks! How’s that for getting ahead? You can give it a blast in the microwave when you’re ready to use it (apparently, we don’t have a microwave so I never bother) until it is the right liquidity for you to use. Or just spoon it in big ol’ dollops from the jar as I do, to make a gorgeous, unctuous, golden mess…

I’m super excited by it, as I have never built a website before but, with some serious time spent playing around and a fair bit of googling, I did it! Yay me!

I hope you like it, it’s always hard to see things from the outside when you are doing something for yourself, so feel free to let me know what you think.

Of course, as with all things homemade, I feel there is still some room to tweak and improve… eventually I would like to put up a complete set of photos for the scrummycakes, but I think for now it’ll do the trick.

I also feel like I am embarking on not exactly a new journey, but perhaps a refined one, in my own life and my little world of baking, so stay tuned here for some experimentations and hopefully some yummy recipes.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Grease and line two 20cm cake tins. In a bowl, combine the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, combine the wet ingredients. Pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture and mix thoroughly. Pour into the cake tins and bake in the centre of the oven for 45 mins or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Cashew Cream Frosting

2 cups raw cashews, soaked in water for three hours, water discarded

225ml fresh apple juice

4 Medjool dates, pitted

2 tablespoons honey

seeds from 2 vanilla beans

Blitz all ingredients in a blender or Thermomix until super smooth. If the frosting seems too loose, add some almond meal and blitz again, until you achieve your desired consistency.

There’s nothing more fun and creative for me than baking, and when you’re making one of your best friend’s birthday cakes, it’s even better. I have this running deal with one of my best friends; because we are the bakers in our families, we make each other a birthday cake each year (because everyone knows, you can’t make your own birthday cake). This year’s effort was taken from ‘Babycakes Covers the Classics’, with a few filling twists of my own (I can’t ever leave a recipe just be!). I took Erin’s classic German Chocolate Cake, and layered it up with organic rainbow raspberry jam (my kid’s favourite because of it is made from three colours of raspberries), coconut frosting and coconut flakes.

Admittedly, the frosting is definitely not (!) vegan, I just couldn’t grab those ingredients at that moment in time, but next time I make one I will give a vegan frosting recipe a go.

Thanks to little hands who are always eager to help. And according to my kids, licking the bowl is still the best bit.